Popular London rockers, The Quireboys, have sharpened up some traditional blues on their latest 2017 album release “White Trash Blues” which The Rock Stream is thrilled to add to its current Album Playlist.

According to the band, “There’s a genuine buzz in the Quireboys’ camp. It’s never been black and white where The Quireboys are concerned, there have always been shades of the blues. And now we’ve got the perfect chance to put a new twist on some old classics.”

After a successful foray into the world of Americana and the release of their most raucous album to date (2016’s Twisted Love), the decision to record a raft of iconic blues tunes might seem like a surprise – almost sideways – move. Far from it – the band explains, “when we met Chris Ingham from Ramblin’ Man Fair he floated the idea of doing a blues set at this year’s festival and we loved the idea. Why not do something different to the norm? And at that point we sensed an opportunity to make a blues record. All of the guys are great musicians – as a band we can play anything. I suppose the trick was giving these blues classics a unique twist and that’s what we’ve tried to do.”

We concur that The Quireboys have done a supurlative job which we trust you will agree as we air half a dozen or so tracks from their latest release.

The Quireboys formed in 1984 in London, with strong ties to Newcastle. When the band formed they were originally known as The Queerboys and later as the London Quireboys in the United States and Canada, settling at last with their current name. The band was successful during the late 1980s and early 1990s, with their debut album A Bit of What You Fancy reaching No. 2 on the UK charts. Their highest charting single was with the song “Hey You”. In 1993, the Quireboys broke up but briefly reformed live in 1995 with different members. A more permanent reformation came in 2001 when frontman Spike, guitarist Guy Griffin and bassist Nigel Mogg put together a new line-up.

The indie alternative band “All Time Low” from Baltimore has recently been featured on The Rock Stream’s Singles Playlist with the promo single “Dirty Laundry”. We have now added that song with a handful of others from the band’s new release “Last Young Renegade” to our Album Playlist.

The band is a four piece that has been together since high school when they released their debut EP in 2004. “Last Young Renegade” is now the seventh album from this ever popular American band that has clearly grown in maturity. Alex Gaskarth who is the vocalist and guitarist for the group has said, “the band were concerned with pushing ourselves forward on the new album, wishing to explore some darker tones and reflecting more on my demons this time around”.

In Feburary, the band announced they had signed to Fueled by Ramen records. Gaskarth explained that following their previous album “Future Hearts”, they were unsigned and looking for a new label. He said signing with Fueled by Ramen was the “perfect opportunity and they really let us be who we want to be. There was no one there trying to shape us or guide us or direct us where to go from here.”

The band spent several weeks staying at ranches in Big Bear and Palm Springs, California. Here, they had a lot of time for “reflecting and soul-searching”. With no deadline, the band worked at their own pace. The members would turn up at midday for the sessions, “playing around ’til something cool came out”. On occasion, Gaskarth would leave the studio enthusiastic with the progress being made on the album, other times he would feel burned out, incapable of listening to music for two days in a row.

Here at The Rock Stream, we think the blood, toil and honesty shines through on the band’s latest offering and that you will enjoy the selection of tracks we have added to our Album Playlist.

Hunter & The Bear is a new four piece band that sound like they should be American but aren’t! They started out as just two mates, Will Irvine and Jimmy Hunter, playing cover songs out of university. Will says, “We were playing in pubs at the time as you do, doing covers, and we just thought let’s try and write some of our own stuff and we did and decided it was sort of not terrible and worthy of giving it a go. We had never even considered music as an actual career option, it was just something we did for fun but the songs just got a lot better the more and more we did it.”

The duo made a great impression everywhere they played, with venues inviting them back for more, meaning the gigs just kept on coming. After doing the circuit and honing in on original songs, they set their sights on building their sound, but to do that they needed reinforcements. At the time, Jimmy and Will had a monthly residency at the upstairs venue of Soho’s Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club and they stole drummer Gareth Thompson from another band playing there at the time and auditioned for a bassist. Only one guitarist showed up for the audition, Chris Clark, but Will said luckily for them he turned out to be “the best musician I have ever seen or played with.”

The beginning of 2014 marked the expansion of the band, which was the turning point when their fledgling career jumped up a few serious notches. They were asked to support guitar and rock royalty, Eric Clapton, who was looking for an up and coming unknown rock band to take on the road of his UK run of shows. All this success as a live band has inevitably led to a demand for an album and after spending some time at the new studio “The Gallery” in Acton, “Paper Heart” was released in May 2017 and we are proud to have added half a dozen or so of their tracks onto the Rock Stream Album playlist.

In our continued quest to upgrade all of our streams to SHOUTcast 2 we have now given our smart phone apps a “makeover” in conjunction with our partners Nobex.

Our shiny new smart phone apps are now available for iPhone, Android or Blackberry completely FREE by searching for The Rock Stream on the appropriate app store for your phone. These new apps are all now SHOUTcast 2 compatible.

You can also find the links on our Web Site by clicking on the Nobex logo on our home page or by selecting the Smart Phone Apps tab.

The new Rock Stream smart phone apps future-proofing The Greatest Rock Of All Time!

As much as it saddened us here at The Rock Stream (and particularly our boss) 2016 was probably the most lacklustre year for Symphonic Rock in a decade. Established bands were beginning to sound a little “tired” and the number of new entrants into the arena dwindled to a pitiful number. Had “Sympho” had its day we wondered? We were, therefore, greatly relieved when we came across the new album “The Butterfly Raiser” by the reformed Bare Infinity on its release in March 2017. The album is the freshest slant on the genre we have heard in a long time and many of the tracks deserve a place on our featured album playlist which is where you will now find them!

Bare Infinity has been around in various guises since 2003. Formed by Thomas Papadopoulos in Athens, the band started off as being one of the very first Female Fronted metal bands in Athens
featuring Christiana Hatzimihal. The band’s popularity peaked when they were asked to represent Greece at Italy’s Gothic convention in Bologna and also to open for Epica at the band’s first ever show in Greece.

In 2009, the band parted ways with their founding singer Christianna who left to join Elysion. She was eventually replaced by Angel and the band released two albums with her, “Always Forever” and “The Passage” in 2009 and 2011. The Passage was hailed as one of the year’s best releases and led to an appearance at the MFVF festival in Belgium making Bare Infinity the first Greek band to participate in the 10 years of the Festival. In 2012, after a great show with Firewind in Athens, Bare Infinity disbanded and was put on hold indefinitely.

Two years passed and Thomas got the music bug once again and announced he wanted to get a new incarnation of the band together and began auditions for a new vocalist. Eventually he picked Ida Elena from Italy who had spent 7 years studying at the Academy of Drama and Musical Techniques where she earned a degree.

Initially, Ida had thought she wanted to be an actress and began performing in theatres throughout Italy. But when she was invited by Italian National Television to sing in front of an audience of 2 million, she realised she wanted to sing more than anything else. As a result, she joined rock band The Dark Side of Venus as well as a Blackmore’s Night Tribute Band. This inspired her to travel to Germany to see a real Blackmore’s Night gig, where she met historical instruments expert Albert Dannemann. Together the two founded the Folk/Celtic duo Fairy Dream and they toured much of Germany and other European cities. During this time Ida met the soprano Gaby Koss (Ex Haggard and Cantus Lunaris) which resulted in a new collaboration for her solo project as well as some work with Cantus Lunaris itself which suited her unique flexible mezzo-soprano voice. With Cantus Lunaris she again toured throughout Europe in 2013 and headlined at The Wave Gothic Treffen – the biggest Gothic Festival in Germany. It was this venture into the Gothic arena that first brought her to Thomas’s attention.

The fact that Ida could both write and sing was a key factor that led her to becoming the first hire of the rejuvenated Bare Infinity. Thomas went on to add the rest of the lineup consisting of Orlok Davis (Guitar – Coma curve), Simos Lantides (drums) and Nick Laskos (Bass guitar) all former members of the band Acolyde. “Race Of Destiny” was the first song recorded in 2014 as a single and was produced by Jacob Hansen renowned for his work with Amaranthe, Evergrey, Volbeat and Epica.

Those you that have followed The Rock Stream over the years (in its many incarnations) will not be surprised that we have added “another” Symphonic Rock album to our current album playlist. What is different is that the latest and fourth album release from Diabulus Musica is something of a revelation.

“Dirge For The Archons” is a considerable leap forward for this Spanish band and we think it is their best yet – propelling them into the “A Class” of Symphonic bands alongside the likes of Nightwish and Epica. We have played their music before such as their hit song “Nocturnal Flowers” but their latest offerings hit a complete new level with a much broader range of songs, superior integration of orchestra and band, superb production and enticing riffs. Check out the 6 new songs we have added to our current playlist on The Rock Stream now!

Diabulus Musica was formed in Pamplona, Navarre in 2006 by Zuberoa Aznárez, Gorka Elso, Adrián Vallejo and Jorge Arca. Lead singer Zuberoa said in an interview that the main reason she founded Diabulus in Musica is because she needed an outlet for developing her own musical ideas.

Gorko Elso and Zuberoa Aznarea are the main conspirators of the band and they had to start virtually from scratch when the other band members quit in 2012. However, the latest line-up is proving to be the most cohesive yet.

We are continuing with our quest to gradually change over all of our streams to SHOUTcast 2 and we have now upgraded our main web site player to the new system. We would be interested to hear from anyone who experiences any difficulties with this – but think we have ironed out most of the “wrinkles”. In 85% of cases you should not find a problem with SHOUTcast 2 but there are a handful of legacy issues which is probably the price of progress!

As such, we will now gradually be reducing the capacity of our legacy streams but will leave a few running for those people who have old internet radios that cannot resolve SHOUTcast 2.

As previously noted, The Rock Stream is gradually moving across to SHOUTcast 2 which means the existing entry in ETS 2 will cease to work in the near future. However, it is super easy to add our new home to your ETS 2 list as shown in this YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbHzkvBqzw8